Last month, according to the Washington Post, the Defense Intelligence Agency completed an analysis that concluded North Korea has successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead. The news comes on the heels of tests conducted by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that demonstrated it could fire an intercontinental ballistic missile that can, theoretically, reach the continental United States. The DPRK has also successfully tested a vehicle that can survive reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Combine all three, and North Korea could have the capacity to deliver a nuclear warhead to a target hundreds if not thousands of miles away.

Rothman explains the threat, and the possible courses of action open to the US. None of them are good. The only one that doesn’t involve mass deaths in war is deterrence. But as Rothman says, North Korea is not the Soviet Union. The USSR may have been evil, but it was ruled by rational men. Kim Jong Un is not rational. Besides, says Rothman:

Deterrence has its own risks. With miniaturization and delivery capability, DPRK could target the tens of thousands of U.S. armed forces stationed in Japan and Korea with almost no warning. In a blinding flash, American deterrence in Northeast Asia could disappear. That’s a prospect that no American president would want to leave as his legacy.

The time for good options is passed. If the DIA analysis is correct, the United States now must choose between two terrifying prospects. For decades, U.S. officials have kicked the North Korean can down the road. This is the end of the road.

I am not comforted by having a man of Donald Trump’s temperament in the White House at a moment like this. I worry about his judgment, of course, but also about his ability to rally the nation if, God forbid, we have to go to what will be the worst war since 1945. It doesn’t help him that the last time a US president took the nation into a preventive war over alleged WMDs, there were none there.

Unlike with Saddam, nobody believes North Korea is bluffing — or if they are bluffing, it’s only to buy themselves time until they develop nuclear-tipped ICBMs. Still, you have to wonder what kind of credibility the US government has with its own people in matters of war.

That said, whatever our own politics, we who pray ought to be praying hard for our president now. The pressure he’s facing regarding decisions he must soon make must be crushing. We could very quickly — very quickly — find ourselves in a situation as dangerous for the world as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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96 Responses to ‘Fire And Fury’ Time?

…are proof that she doesn’t properly handle classified information, behave ethically or possibly even legally, meaning she shouldn’t be president. Oh, and Hillary is a neocon whose past support for foolish wars (Iraq, Libya) and brinkmanship with Russia hardly indicate she would have done a good job with this North Korean situation had she been elected president. I’m hardly thrilled that Trump is in charge now, but there is little reason to think Hillary would have been much better. And yes, her e-mails are in fact relevant in demonstrating that she is unfit.

I wonder if anyone outside of the North Korean leadership knows if Kim Jong Un is rational or not. Even if he is, the regime seems paranoid and fearful of the US (no doubt recalling our earlier war). Rational, ruthless, and cunning but fearful people can still miscalculate, if each side misunderstands the other. The possibility of a deadly miscalculation during a rapid series of escalations cannot be dismissed out of hand. Once blood is drawn by either side, the need to not back down and to demonstrate strength in the face of a challenge could drive things to a dangerous place quickly.

I was going to suggest that you place your Ben Op communities far away from likely targets. But then incoming ICBM’s could well deviate widely from their intended target, since the North Koreans are still rookies when it comes to ICBM’s.

Of course, we would win clearly and decisively in the end. North Korea would be smoldering ruin. But a good part of South Korea might suffer the same fate, and thousands of US troops and civilians in South Korea would be among the casualties. This assumes they don’t already have a missile or two ready to go, and then get off a lucky shot. Then it could be much worse.

Perhaps an uneasy coexistence is the only hopeful outcome. In that case, get a copy of “A Canticle for Leibowitz” and read it. Trying times call for dystopian fiction…

” According to one report, Kushner already called Kim Jong-un an “unqualified person” who got where he is via nepotism. ” Pot, meet kettle.

I am a flaming liberal. I preferred not to see Trump removed as he would be replaced by some snake waving creationist who really believes that stuff, and knows what he is doing and knows how government actually works. We’d just have Trump making an ass of himself for four years, and the Republicans digging themselves deeper into a hole. Now…At least Pence wouldn’t be double dog daring Kim to press the button.

Remember all the intelligence estimates in the early eighties that suggested the USSR was in great shape economically? After the fall of the Berlin Wall these egregious errors made Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan suggest that we should consider doing without an intelligence agency.

Actually subsequent re-analyses suggest that the CIA estimates were substantially correct and the ‘low’ estimates from Soviet dissidents were unrealistically low. (The high estimates from the Soviet government were also wrong: CIA estimates in the middle of the range).

I strongly dislike the CIA’s moral/normative commitments, but say what you will, they’re staffed by smart and sincerely committed people who know what they’re doing (and warned us against Trump).

Eh, the only choice Kim has is to make it clear that he can and will use nukes but to not ever actually use them. If he gives them up, N. Korea gets invaded like Libya when the US lied to Gaddafi and convinced him to give up his nuclear weapon program. If he uses them, N. Korea gets nuked, then invaded anyway. If he shows force but never uses it, he can remain relatively safe from outside intervention.

“The situation is also of our own making in another way. We looked the other way as Pakistan developed its nuclear program…”

This was a “lesser of two evils” choice. At the time the Paks agreed to let the Reagan administration run weapons through Pakistan to the Mujahadeen for use against the Soviets in the Afghan war. The price for allowing us to run guns through Pakistan was that we look the other way while the Paks developed the bomb.

Since India — Pakistan’s mortal enemy — had already gone nuclear, the Paks were so motivated to get the bomb themselves that it’s likely they would have gone nuclear even had we strongly opposed.

The Soviet loss in the Afghan war (“Russia’s Viet Nam”) is largely credited as being a contributing factor to the downfall of the USSR. So running those weapons through Pakistan has to be considered one of the best foreign policy moves of the cold war, even though the ultimate price included both Bin Laden and a nuclear armed Pakistan.

Anyone with Un’s haircut can’t possibly be suicidal – whether or not rational. The man is a reliable hedonist.

The only non-rational person around is Trump, who is so completely motivated by proving that he does not have small hands, he has to boast about the size of his crowds, electoral win, fire and fury nonstop. The Generals will stop him.

And, by the way, there is nothing wrong for generals to refuse to carry out manifestly immoral or crazy “orders”. We hanged Keitel and Jodl for failing to do so.

[NFR: You do realize, I hope, that if the generals did refuse to carry out the Commander in Chief’s lawful order, that would be a really big deal. — RD]

It’s less of a big deal than a nuclear war which could lead to a few dead million civilians…

His chief of staff is a former general: General John Kelly, the secretary of defense is a former general: General James Mattis. That’s a lot of generals in civilian roles. Hopefully, they can keep him from doing anything to stupid.

I really don’t see how you can take a man like Kim, who would incinerate half of the world to hang to “power”, then suggest that’s perfectly rational. It isn’t. The fact that we can often diagnose what is wrong with the insane and then talk about it in clinical terms does not make it less insane.

Can we stop with the “but her emails” mockery, as if that insane broad would’ve been any better in this situation? In case you’ve all forgotten, she was the nutjob who uttered, “We came, we saw, he died,” and giggled satisfactorily after she said it, even as Libya was descending into chaos. https://youtu.be/Fgcd1ghag5Y

I’m no Trump guy but she would’ve been at least as worrisome as he is in this current dilemma.

Well, I don’t know how many investigations and hearings there were on the subject, but one thing is clear that no “classified” information that could be harmful ever made it out of the servers.

“behave ethically or possibly even legally,”

On the question of email servers, no better but no worse than her Republican predecessors – or indeed the Tweeter-in-Chief. This is not “whataboutism”; it is about perspective.

“Oh, and Hillary is a neocon whose past support for foolish wars (Iraq, Libya)”

She is an interventionist, and she lost the nomination in 2008 because of it. But she does not need to prove she does not have small hands.

“brinkmanship with Russia”

Pish-posh and poppycock. She tried “reset” – and got hammered for it. The problem with Russia is that it is neither a mortal enemy nor a friend. It is a state that will use all the tools at its disposal to remove threats to its survival and also to advance its interests. Romney was wrong and so is Trump. But there was never any “brinksmanship” with Russia under HRC.

“she would have done a good job with this North Korean situation had she been elected president.”

Elijah: “I really don’t see how you can take a man like Kim, who would incinerate half of the world to hang to “power”, then suggest that’s perfectly rational. It isn’t.”

It does depend on how you measure “rationality”. There is no evidence that the DPRK intends to, or could, incinerate half the world to survive. Acting on your survival instinct is perfectly rational, even more so when there are credible threats to it.

You say Kim is not rational. I have to take issue with that. Kim is very rational in his on way. Demonstrating that he has nuclear weapons and not giving them up is the ultimate safe guard for his regime from outside intervention. Nothing was ever done about North Korea because we were always worried about what would happen to Seoul. With nuclear weapons that anti just got upped. He also learned the lesson of Qaddafi. Qaddafi gave up his weapons of mass destruction and then was eventually overthrown. Kim is acting rationally in this regard. He is acting in a way he sees that will ensure him and his regimes survival. They will do nothing else but probably eventually agree to talks and win some concessions. I would be sure of this scenario but with Trump that gives me some element of doubt because I really believe that he responds with emotions and not reason in many instances.

Obviously. I would not judge Hitler to have been a rational man, even though he pursued the Final Solution with ruthless efficiency. I would not judge many of Stalin’s acts to have been those of a rational man, e.g. the Holodomor.

Kim’s various threats to attack and wipe out various nations and people over the years are, in fact, evidence of his intent – however poorly formed. His capability to do so seems to be a bit clearer today, no?

We have been kicking the can down the road on DPRK for years – long before Trump came along. Their, um, ‘survival instinct’ is better described as a thirst for global legitimacy and stature.

“For decades, U.S. officials have kicked the North Korean can down the road. This is the end of the road.”

This line of thinking is the real danger, far beyond even the dangers of poor leadership on each side. The end of the road is not when North Korea has the technical capability to nuke an American city or military base – NK has had that capability for more than a decade, although it would have to use boats rather than rockets, and several other states, including Israel, have the same capability and we live with it. The end of the road is when North Korea actually uses nuclear weapons against an American base or city. Until such an attack happens, or is plainly imanent (in terms of, preparations in progress for an attack within hours, not merely within the realm of hypothetical possibility), the road continues and the can should continue to be kicked.

Preventative war is a choice, not a mandatory action that we can be backed into doing against our will. We can and should choose not to wage preventative war – not in the Middle East, not in Korea, not anywhere.

The idea that her emails were a disqualifier when her opponent’s data hygene is demonstrably worse is laughable. You’re not honestly evaluating competing risks, you’re manufacturing justifications to make yourself feel better about throwing away a flawed-if-normal politician in favor of someone who I should in the process of dismantling American power.

This was a “lesser of two evils” choice. At the time the Paks agreed to let the Reagan administration run weapons through Pakistan to the Mujahadeen for use against the Soviets in the Afghan war. The price for allowing us to run guns through Pakistan was that we look the other way while the Paks developed the bomb.

It would have been a great thing for the world if neither one had happened. As a result of the Mujahadeen “winning,’ Russia’s Vietnam became, in the fullness of time, America’s second Vietnam, and Ronald Reagan’s freedom fighters became George Bush’s terrorists.

All of our current troubles over Korea stem from some bad misjudgments 1944-1950. Korea has a long history as a nation, although often under domination of one of its larger numbers. Neither north nor south is demographically or geographically suitable to make it on its own. The north has always depended on agricultural surpluses from the south, andthe south has always depended on the north for mineral resources, crafts or industrial production, etc. Separating the two was a disaster. The south pulled itself out only by following the Japanese model of importing raw materials, manufacturing, and exporting. The north has had to lean on China, which had its own interests, even if one of them was not letting the U.S. dominate the entire peninsula. But realistically, Korea as a whole would have been better off if one side OR the other dominated the entire peninsula. The stalemate has been highly destructive.

If North Korea’s nuclear competence continues to improve, my biggest concern isn’t a nuclear attack on a city or military base. Rather, an EMP attack (or perhaps a destructive hack of American financial or physical infrastructure) could knock us out of civilization.

Of course, North Korea isn’t the only country that could devastate us in this way.

A well-executed hack, if obscured, could topple us and we might not even know who did it.

“I’m no Trump guy but she (Hillary) would’ve been at least as worrisome as he is in this current dilemma.”

Oh for crying out loud. It’s time to get past this utter nonsense. Clinton spent her entire career in government including serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee and then as Secretary of State. She is the walking embodiment of a thorough policy wonk. We’ve never had an incoming president better qualified to handle tough foreign policy issues. Since WW2 only Eisenhower and HW Bush have come close.

Trump is an unstable fool with less understanding of government than your local dog catcher and whose mental capacity is overwhelmed by the task of reading a two page analysis. Trump is the least capable person to hold the office in the history of our country. By a country mile. Come on.

It’s become conventional wisdom that Kim Jong Un is “insane” and “irrational” but where’s the evidence? Incredibly oppressive, cruel, evil, etc., yes – but nuclear weapons are the only foolproof way to insulate your regime from outside attack. That’s a goal that all dictators share.

“Deterrence has its own risks. With miniaturization and delivery capability, DPRK could target the tens of thousands of U.S. armed forces stationed in Japan and Korea with almost no warning.”

Gee, perhaps if we didn’t have these tens of thousands of US troops in Japan and Korea this wouldn’t be an issue. Didn’t WW2 end over 70 years ago? Can anyone explain why on Earth we still have troops in Japan? Sadly, the answer to that question is because of our military industrial complex and our belief that we must have bases and troops all over the globe imposing our will on the rest of humanity. Gee, I wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t like us? But sure, Russian aggression. LOL. Lastly, oddly enough, Rothman never mentions another option. End the sanctions against N Korea and leave them alone!! As Daniel Larison has pointed out repeatedly, our allies the Saudis can decimate the country of Yemen, and nobody cares. But N Korea, well, they’re the bad guys. Why? Because we labeled them as such. What a total farce.

“The US doesn’t “have” to go to war with North Korea or anyone else. North Korea has not threatened us – and even if they did, they are weak. Just nonsense. Trump is being led around by the nose by the dumb neocons in his administration.”

Not that you or anyone else cares, but I fully agree with all of that. What confuses me though is that in your previous comment, two minutes earlier you said that “Trump is a fool.” Many others in the comments here have said the same. I’m not sure that’s true. I prefer what you wrote instead, in the comment of yours I listed here. What’s killing Trump are all of the Bush / Romney / Neocon types that for some stupid reason he has all through his administration.

This constant drumbeat for the next Armageddon by the media (It isn’t a real crisis until CNN has a music theme for it!)is exactly why I do not own a TV or respect mainstream media as a source for anything.

This Korean thing is getting annoying. Can’t even plan a good Hawaiian vacation right now. Strange we have not heard stronger rhetoric from China, yet. Our sabres are rattling uncomfortably loud right now.

She may be preferable to Trump – debatable – but this is a creation of the media, not based on any facts. She was a middling senator with nothing important to show for her “expertise”. Her biggest accomplishment at State was travelling a zillion miles or whatever. And promises are not policies. This reminds me of the fools who would have us believe in Joe Biden’s foreign policy “gravitas” – he’s wrong most of the time, but his credentials are great.

I made the mistake(?) of re-reading A Canticle for Leibowitz a few weeks before the 2016 election. In the lead up to November 8th, all my prayers turned towards divine intervention to prevent nuclear annihilation or if not that to preserve humanity and the Church in some remnant because as I figured all the evils men have visited on each other we have endured and moved past. We have never moved past the kind of complete destruction that would follow global nuclear war.

Never having confidence in Trump’s temperament or his ability to submit to the calmer voices around him, November 8th and what has followed remains terrifying.

CNN , the NYT, and Washington Post received another gift with Trumps Rhetoric about the Chinese puppet. My take is it is NK call. If they have decided to strike they may disappear as a society. Up to them. Kills us we will kill all of you. Problem being of course this is all to China and Russia’s advantage. They face no such threat.

I love the alliteration and the repeated “r” sound at the end of each word. Did Trump invent that beautiful phrase–whatever the merits of the ominous idea it gives expression to–or was it some young ghost of William Safire, miraculously ensconced in the West Wing?

The obvious answer is for us to withdraw our troops from South Korea, something we should have done at the end of the Cold War 30 years ago. It is completely rational for the North Koreans to view the US military presence on their border as a mortal threat to their regime (just as we viewed a Soviet military presence in Cuba as a mortal threat to us during the Cuban Missile Crisis). Why on Earth do we still have troops there anyway? The South Korean economy is much larger than that of North Korea, and it has a more powerful military. Why is South Korea not able to take care of its own defense? If need be, we should give them custody of some nukes so that they can have nuclear parity with the North, and let them handle their own defense themselves.

In 1941 Japan had to sneak a fleet of ships across the Pacific to attack us by surprise, very well done, too. If we had been hearing them broadcast threats to attack our territory (Hawaii was a territory then) and movies of how they planned to do it, aircraft carriers, battleships, what might the US have done? Respond, maybe? Kim has weaponry Hitler only dreamed of. He is threatening to target our territory “next month”. He can do it *without* surprise, has been threatening to attack our nation for a long time, testing nuclear weapons. He doesn’t need surprise at all. Just for idiots who know what to do to do nothing. We didn’t learn very much in 1941, did we? We said we’d “never again” be surprised by an enemy! Well, we won’t be. He’ll lob missiles at us and our allies (one of whom, hilariously, is Japan!) and we will do NOTHING, until maybe San Francisco is hit. Even then, you know, we don’t want to make him mad, do we? No, that would be bad. The discussion seems to be all about Trump which is wrong. It’s also all about what if we do something. What will everyone say after Kim does something and we did nothing? I guess blame Trump. Or Obama, or Bush. How many times in history has a little S*** like Kim been allowed to threaten people next to him and across the globe with utter destruction and not get squashed? Hitler wrote about it years before he did it, and everyone ignored him. He did what he said he’d do, and did it with a lot less than Kim has. But nobody wanted to offend Hitler either so nobody did anything. There are people in Japan today wondering why they bothered to be so secretive. What a wasted effort.

Interesting comments. This will not be a TV war. The whole world will pay some price if nukes start popping off. JFK was unaware that the Russians had nuclear armed subs and land missiles (nuke warheads) to repel any invasion. The USSR military had instructions to use. He chose negotiations. On the Japanese attack – the Australians had cracked the Japanese naval code JN25 forewarning of Pearl Harbor, but Churchill did not pass it on to the US. Or did he? The most maligned character of WW2 is Chamberlain. His peace in our time gave the then unprepared Brits time to start producing Spitfires and Hurricanes at a rate exceeding Germany aircraft output. It would be nice if Mr. and Mrs. Kuschner and President Trump would seek alternative advice to complement their deep and irrelevant experience in real estate. Scary times.

Like many others here have said, Kim isn’t crazy. He’s acting out of completely rational self-preservation in an attempt to avoid both American dreams of regime change/occupation (which China will never tolerate) and losing face in front of his own countrymen. Think of him as a frilled lizard trying to intimidate a much larger foe that is several times more deadly to him than he could ever be to it.

Like clockwork, every single time the neoconservatives want to stir up support for preemptive regime change against a weaker foe, it has the media start portraying the leader in question as a mouth-foaming madman about to unleash chaos on the world. The American people shouldn’t fall for it again.

What really has me concerned is that Trump thinks that it is sound diplomacy to lob threats via tweets at people who are already convinced that the USA is seeking their doom no matter what they do. I don’t envy Tillerson who is now forced to do damage control almost daily.

By the way, based on her disturbing quip about the death of Muammar Gaddafi, I’m not the least bit convinced that Hillary Clinton would be handling the situation any better.